Cristofori, et al.

[Israel Stein]

At 10:57 AM 4/19/2006, Joe Garret

>Israel said: "The Cristofori action does not even remotely resemble 
>the modern piano action. It is really flimsy, uses a parchment 
>hammer, has an intermediate lever as part of the (single) escapement 
>mechanism, I believe that there is no provision for checking... "
>
>Israel,
>On the contrary, if you study Cristofori's design, you will note 
>that is has many similarities to a modern action. It DID have a 
>mechanism, (of sorts), for checking. And, he only used the parchment 
>for a very short time and then went to other materials. Although, 
>his action was a "single escapement", it responded far better than 
>later actions that were of the same ilk. He, IMO, was a century 
>ahead of his time, just as Mathuschek was.<G>
>Regards,


Thanks, Joe, but I have studied the Cristofori action - some time 
ago, true, which is why I wasn't sure about the checking - yes, the 
1726 version has a backcheck. Still, several similar features do not 
make true the claim that "Cristofori developed the piano action as we 
know it today" which is what I was responding to. The piano action as 
we know it today is designed to play a massive instrument and provide 
rapid repetition while slinging tremendous amounts of weight with 
one's fingers (hopefully, without injury). Cristofori's design was 
meant to play - well, a "Gravicembalo" - a five octave harpsichord, 
essentially. He did not have to deal with all those issues of weight, 
the instrument was not  expected to fill more than a largish drawing 
room or perhaps dining room with its sound, and so I scratch my head 
at why he got into all that complexity with intermediate levers that 
I see in his 1726 vintage action.

The much simpler - but quite effective - "English"  hopper-type 
(that's "jack" in todays terms) action and the much more agile 
"Viennese" action served pianodom quite well for close to 100 years 
(yielding the music of Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, among others) 
before the double escapement came on the scene, and the Erard design 
owes much more to the English hopper-action than the Cristofori design.

At 10:57 AM 4/19/2006, Ron Nosaman wrote
>To Israel and All,
>
>     Joe is right.  Christofori was at least a hundred
>years ahead of all others.
>
>    His first action had escapement and a "sort" of
>check.  And it did not work very well.
>    His second action had a good working escapement
>and a good  working  check.  This  check is so good
>that we use it today.
>
>   As a matter of fact he was one spring away from what
>we use today in having a double escapement.
>   You will  find both working models in our Museum now.
>
>    I  tinkered around with his second action model and
>  by adding  one  (1)  spring it becomes a double escapement.

Ron, you are looking at his action with 20-20 hindsight, from a 
19th-20th century perspective. There was absolutely no motivation for 
Cristofori, his contemporaries or immediate followers to look for a 
"double escapement" of any kind - the added speed of repetition (if 
any) would not be worth the added complexity (and proneness to 
breakage) - which are definite disadvantages in the competitive 
atmosphere of piano building in Northern Europe. The motivation for 
the double escapement design when it came was to regain the speed of 
repetition and agility lost to the growing weight of hammers, bulk of 
the action and the introduction of cloth bushings - all of which 
served to make the actions slower and more cumbersome (and eventually 
made the Viennese design impractical). As I wrote above, the single 
escapement English and Viennese actions were just fine for their 
heyday - and, for that matter, can play circles around the modern 
double-escapement action in terms of velocity and repetition. I doubt 
that a double escapement would provide any discernable advantage to 
the lightly-strung, wood/leather hammered, very shallow keydip 18th 
and early-19th century piano.

>  ed440 at mindspring.com (Ed Sutton)  wrote:
>
>
>There is an Antunes piano built in Portugal in 1767 with Christofori 
>action, now in the collection of the Shrine to Music in Vermillion, 
>SD.  It has almost entirely original parts, and plays remarkably 
>well, as can be heard on several recordings.  It is a good candidate 
>for the world's oldest living piano.
>
>My guess is that the problem with the Christofori action was that it 
>was so revolutionary that harpsichord makers did not understand how 
>to regulate it.  The same was probably true of the Erard action, 
>which took over 50 years (and some modifications and mass production 
>developments) to gain general use.


Ed,

I rather doubt that "regulation" had anything to do with it. The 
mechanism is not that complicated - and there is very little there to 
regulate that someone who knows how to regulate a tongue/plectrum 
assembly or a damper jack couldn't handle. And I don't even want to 
get into the issue of who actually serviced the instruments post-sale 
(remember, the professional tuner was nonexistent until sometime in 
the 19th century...)

I suspect that the Northern European pianomakers who followed 
Cristofori - and they were not necessarily harpsichord makers - opted 
for simpler designs for the reasons I started to outline above - 
commercial practicality. The less complex a design, the less cost in 
parts making (remember, this is before industrial production) the 
more competitive the product. And pianomaking became quite 
competitive in later 18th - early 19th centuries. Also, if you've 
ever had to make repairs in mid-concert on a 18th-century piano 
((like I had to do and had witnessed others often enough) you would 
know why the more complex design would have been a commercial 
liability in the 18th and early 19th century piano.

Israel Stein